2021 MOTO GP PREVIEW
Mat Oxley’s five point guide to the start of the Motogp season.
It’s all about the round black things
It’s impossible to put an exact price on a Motogp bike because they’re never sold until they’re past their sell-by-date. But let’s take a stab at £1.5 million. So how come the two hoops of black rubber that cost a few hundred quid are the most important things on the motorcycle?
Because the tyres are the only part of the bike that touch the racetrack. Therefore everything the bike does is transmitted to the asphalt through them. So you can have the quickest accelerating thing on the grid, but it’s not going anywhere unless it generates maximum grip from the tyres.
This has never been truer than now. Motogp’s latest
Michelin tyres work at their best over a narrow temperature range, so riders and engineers do everything they can to make the bike generate the correct temperatures in the tyres, and whoever makes the best job of that will win the 2021 Motogp title, just as Suzuki won the 2020 crown, with its very Michelin-friendly GSX-RR.
‘If you can use the tyres in a better way than everyone else, even marginally, you’re going to gain a big advantage,’ says Suzuki’s Motogp test rider Sylvian Guintoli.
But doing that isn’t easy. ‘The more you look at tyres the less clear the pattern is!’ adds KTM chief engineer Sebastian Risse.
Marquez: will he, won’t he?
» The biggest question mark of 2021 hangs over Marc Marquez, the man who ruled Motogp until he broke an arm at last year’s season-opening Spanish GP. The six-times Motogp king fractured his right humerus bone, which isn’t funny at all because the upper-arm is a bastard of a bone to break for a motorcycle racer. Six months later Marquez still doesn’t know when the arm will be strong enough to allow him to return to race his Honda RC213V.
So far he has had three operations on the injury: the first to insert metalwork, the second to replace that metalwork, which he had bent, and the third to undertake a bone graft, because the bone had become infected after the first two surgeries, causing a malunion of the fracture. Fun, eh? Who will ride Marquez’s Repsol Hondas if he can’t? Most likely Andrea Dovizioso, who walked out of Ducati at the end of last season after falling out with chief engineer Gigi Dall’igna. Let’s hope the broken halves of Marquez’s humerus do knit together. It would be a disaster for Motogp to lose the 27-year-old, because no one has ever raced a motorcycle like MM93.
Racing the virus
» Last year was the weirdest season ever: no fans, masked riders, team bubbles and cancelled races. Sadly Covid-19 isn’t going away just yet, so this year’s Motogp championship will be very much like last year’s – always racing to stay ahead of the virus. Already the Australian and Thai GPS have been cancelled, while the US and Argentine rounds have been postponed. It is hoped that the season will start with back-to-back races in Qatar (28 March and 4 April), but even this depends on Qatar’s Covid immigration rules. Round three is scheduled for Portimao on 18 April but is subject to the virus situation in Portugal.
Be sure to check regularly for updates at motogp.com
‘This year’s Motogp championship will be very much like last year’s’
British eyes on Moto2
For the first time in more than a decade there are no British riders in Motogp. And for the first time in 50 years Britain has two serious contenders in the intermediate class.
Sam Lowes is a definite Moto2 title favourite. After a run of rubbish seasons, during which he crashed more than he saw the podium, he was a different man last year. He won three races and led the championship, so for the first time he goes into a new season knowing he can fight for the title. That in itself is a huge transformation – knowing you can do it can be a huge part of success. Lowes has the right bike (Kalex), rides for one of the best teams (Belgium crew Marc VDS) and is better physically and mentally prepared than ever. He just needs to stay right side up and he can win it.
Jake Dixon – in his third year in Moto2 – also knows he has the speed. The former BSB race winner switched from KTM to Kalex last year and by mid-season was one of the fastest out there. Breaking a wrist at the end of the season wasn’t great, but if the 25-year-old goes into 2021 with the same speed and mindset he had before the crash he will challenge for podiums and maybe even wins. If he can do that then he’s the man most likely to be the next Brit in Motogp.
The new wave is here
Last year there were five first-time winners in the premier-class – the first time that’s happened since the world championships were founded in 1949.
The victories of Brad Binder, Joan Mir, Franco Morbidelli, Miguel Oliveira and Fabio Quartararo announced the arrival of a new generation that’s taking over from elders, and nolonger betters, such as Cal Crutchlow and Valentino Rossi who may retire at the end of this season.
This year the big contenders are likely to be reigning champion Mir, Morbidelli, Oliveira, Quartararo, Mir’s Suzuki team-mate Alex Rins and Ducati’s Jack Miller. And Marc Marquez… if he makes the season start.
Mir and Rins have the advantage of sitting on the bestbalanced bike on the grid, Suzuki’s GSX-RR. And when Mir won the title he was only in his second year in Motogp, so expect him to be even faster in 2021.
Quartararo led much of last year’s series but was let down by his latest YZR-M1, which only worked in certain conditions. Morbidelli once again rides a 2019 YZR-M1. He wasn’t happy about that last year, until the 2020 M1 turned out to be a donkey. If Yamaha don’t produce a much-improved M1 for 2021 the VR46 protégé may turn out to be Yamaha’s best hope for the title. On a two-year old bike!
Oliveira knows how to put a championship together and Miller will be a contender if Ducati can make the Desmosedici turn better and work with Michelin’s latest rear slick.